Computing systems having touch-gesture recognition capabilities may be configured to detect input touches from a user, such as touch inputs on the display surface, near-touch gestures directed toward the surface, etc. For the case of computing systems having multi-touch displays, multi-touch gestures from a single user may be detected, as well as multiple touch inputs (including multiple multi-touch inputs) from various users, and touch gestures in which an input is made via movement of a touch on or over the display.
Different gestures made on a multi-touch display may be mapped to different user interface controls. If each control is mapped to a different gesture, then a large set of user interface functionalities may correspond to a large set of touch gestures. However, in practice, a set of physical gestures that a user may reasonably be able to perform consistently and reliably may be relatively small. To address this issue, a user interface may utilize dedicated on-screen areas, such as touch buttons, sliders, checkboxes, and the like, in place of some gestures so that a total set of gestures utilized by a user may be reduced. However, such elements may clutter the user interface and leave little display space dedicated to actual content.